You can read Kurt Anderson’s ‘How to Back Up a Trailer’…or you can just back up a trailer

If you don’t know how to back up a trailer, change a tire or shuffle cards like a pro, you may not be from this planet. In which case, Kurt Anderson’s How to Back Up a Trailer . [...]

Paul G. Maziar and Matt Maust’s new book makes you make sense of it

The ideas and personal revelations about the mundane in What It Is: What It Is won’t make sense if you don’t want them to.
That’s because writer Paul G. Maziar’s and graphic artist/photographer/Cold War Kids bassist Matt Maust’s collaboration feels like an existential [...]

Long Beach author David Mark Dannov talks about writing, and reading at Acres of Books
Most writers are thankful to publish three books in a lifetime. Long Beach-based author David Mark Dannov accomplished that feat in one day, dropping three volumes of poetry via his own imprint, Black Joke Press, then reading selections at Acres of [...]

‘Proud to Be An Okie’ explains the subtext behind all that hee-ing and haw-ing

If ever a book needed a soundtrack, it’s Peter La Chapelle’s Proud to Be an Okie: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Migration to Southern California. He manages to write about some of the best times and hot bands of the past century [...]

The short, sharp life of soul surfer Bunker Spreckles

We love young, dead people if they’re hot and have backstory. Which greatly explains Bunker Spreckels, Surfing’s Divine Prince of Decadence, the latest from writer Craig R. Stecyk III (“discoverer” of the Dogtown skaters) and ex-Spreckels photographer Art Brewer. It also explains why you probably don’t need [...]

Jim Tully was a famous writer in the ’20s and ’30s. Now, he’s being rediscovered
Jim Tully’s people and places are gone now. Tully himself is dead 50 years—which doesn’t help the career—and 10 of his 12 books are out of print. But 2008 could be Tully’s big year. Or 2009.
Tully’s been called the missing link [...]

‘The Perry Bible Fellowship’ gets bound and pressed
Humor is a terrible thing to waste and comic strips are a terrible thing to ignore, so it’s time to finally pin down Nicholas Gurewitch’s The Perry Bible Fellowship. The strip was initially famous for its doughy, featureless characters that found themselves shoved into fantastic and absurd situations, [...]

National Novel Writing Month is here; no more excuses
Proust lined his bedroom with cork panels, muffling any outside noises that might distract him. Trollope got up at the crack of dawn, seven days a week, pounding out 2,500 words before starting his day job at the post office. Hemingway caroused all night and then let [...]

Novelist Dan Fante is still inspired by his famous dad
There’s a fine line between a good poetry reading and a bad one. Fortunately, the rare appearance of LA-native/Arizona-based writer Dan Fante at {open}’s “Readings From a Burning Shore” last week falls into the former category. Fante’s real-life persona stands in stark contrast to the characters [...]

Cholo Style is part gang life, part escape plan

It’s always been hard to say whose gangs were first in California—the Latinos, the African Americans, the Asians, the whites—or first in the publishing world. But as for best, it’s no contest: the Latinos win it, for the early-’80s arrival of Teen Angels magazine: spitting out a [...]